Method for improving breast cancer diagnosis using mountain-view and contrast-enhancement presentation of mammography

a technology of contrast enhancement and breast cancer diagnosis, applied in image enhancement, instruments, applications, etc., can solve the problems of reducing the efficient use of radiologist's time, not all potentially detectable cancers are reported, and the second reading is expensive and time-consuming. , to achieve the effect of enhancing the contrast of breast images, reducing the number of search misses, and facilitating radiologist detection of breast cancer

US6956975B2Inactive Publication Date: 2005-10-18CARESTREAM HEALTH INC
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Patent Information

Authority / Receiving Office
US · United States
Patent Type
Patents(United States)
Current Assignee / Owner
Publication Date
2005-10-18
Estimated Expiration
Not applicable · inactive patent

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Abstract

A method for improving disease diagnosis using contrast enhancement presentation comprising: providing an input digital diagnostic image; applying a decomposition filter bank to the input digital diagnostic image; constructing a tone scale curve from the input digital diagnostic image; applying said tone scale curve to the input digital diagnostic image to produce a tone-scaled image; applying a decomposition filter bank to the tone-scaled image; generating the contrast weight control signals from the input digital diagnostic image by extracting the high contrast edge signals at the coarse scale; adjusting the decomposition outputs from both the input image and the tone-scaled image according to the contrast weight control signals; and applying a reconstruction filter bank to the adjusted signals to produce a contrast enhancement presentation output image.
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Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0001] This invention relates in general to a method for presenting image details in a digital image, and more particularly to a method for presenting diagnostically important image details in digital mammography.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0002] Breast cancer screening using mammography has demonstrated that early detection is one obvious way to increase survival. However, due to the limitations of the observers, not all potentially detectable cancers are reported. Studies (see C. J. Baines, D. V. McFarlane, and A. B. Miller, “The role of the reference radiologist: estimates of interobserver agreement and potential delay in cancer detection in the national cancer screening study,”Invest Radiology, 25, pp. 971-976, 1990; R. E. Bird, T. W. Wallace, and B. C. Yankaskas, “Analysis of cancers missed at screening mammography,”Radiology, 184, pp. 613-617, 1992; J. A. Harvey, L. L. Fajardo, and C. A. Innis, “Previous mammograms in patients with impalpable breast carcino...

Examples

first embodiment

[0059]The invention as shown in FIG. 1 can be performed more efficiently by two different embodiments shown in FIGS. 7a and 7b. Instead of processing the original version of the input image and its tone-scaled version through the decomposition filter bank separately, the new embodiments only process one of the versions and the coarsest scale of the other version. FIG. 7a shows the first embodiment where the preprocessed image Ib is processed in the tone scale curve algorithm 50 to produce a tone-scaled image It. The tone-scaled image is then passed through a filter UN / 2 52 to produce the coarsest scale BN / 2,t. The preprocessed input image Ib, in another pass, is passed through a filter bank, consisting of a set of N decomposition filters F1, F2, . . . , FN, 541, 542, . . . , 54n. The main function of the filters 541-54n in this invention is to extract the image edge features, which are considered as desirable targets for enhancement. The output I1, I2, . . . , IN from each of the fi...

second embodiment

[0060]FIG. 7b shows the The preprocessed input image Ib is passed through two filters FN-1 and FN, 70, 72 to produce the coarsest edge signals, IN-1 and IN respectively. In a parallel path, the preprocessed image Ib is processed in the tone scale curve algorithm 74 to produce a tone-scaled image It. Then, the tone-scaled image is passed through a filter bank, consisting of a set of N decomposition filters F1, F2, . . . , FN, 761-76n, and one low pass filter UN / 2 78. The tone-scaled version output It1, It2, . . . , ItN from the filter bank is modulated in modulators in M1, M2, . . . , MN 801-80n by a gain-control signal G1-Gn, which is produced by the contrast weight control generator. The contrast weight control generator 82 in this embodiment is generated from all the output of the decomposition filter bank of the tone-scaled image It1-ItN as well as the output of coarsest scale of the original image Ib, IN-1, IN. Then the gain-adjusted signals I′t1, I′t2, . . . , I′tN, together w...